The Steelworkers' Retirement Security System

A Worker-based Model for Community Investment

By (author) Glenn Beamer

Publication date:

12 May 2016

Length of book:

160 pages

Publisher

Lehigh University Press

ISBN-13: 9781611461886

The Steelworkers' Retirement Security System: A Worker-based Model for Community Investment articulates a new model for economic security based upon steelworkers’ pension provisions and labor politics after World War II. Labor’s collective bargaining agreements created interdependent commitments that sustained jobs and stabilized communities. The evidence in The Steelworkers' Retirement Security System includes an empirical analysis of United States steel towns and case studies of Weirton, West Virginia, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Johnstown, Pennsylvania. By understanding the politics that bound firms and workers together and adapting these commitments to the post-industrial economy, The Steelworkers' Retirement Security System offers a new means by which communities can provide workers security and economic growth. This new model, the Guaranteed Pension and Community Investment plan, provide workers with lifetime retirement annuities and communities with reliable investment capital.

Introduction
The Steelworkers’ Model
The Employee Purchase of Weirton Steel
Resurgence & Sustenance in Bethlehem & Johnstown
A Worker-based Model for Retirement Security
A Worker-based Model for Community Investment
Connecting to the Public Sector: “Ford to City: Drop Dead”
Politics from the Ground Up
Selected Bibliography

In this important book, Glenn Beamer explains exactly how labor built strong communities in the past—and how it might do so again in the future. Cities of Steel is forcefully written, meticulously researched and required reading for anyone concerned about America's future.